About Cable Sentry

Cable Sentry provides a single, real-time monitoring and fault-finding solution with the sensitivity to identify cable sections susceptible to failure or faults with a pre-location accuracy of 10m.

Working with OptaSense who employ the best scientists in the industry, long-established Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) technology is used in a new and innovative way to transform standard fibre optic cables into thousands of virtual microphones, enabling complete monitoring along the entire length of your subsea cable assets.

The system can be fitted to existing fibre optic cables to turn them into thousands of cost-effective sensors able to detect issues such as cable faults, free span oscillation and pressure changes more accurately than traditional methods and tools.

An energy surge along the cable creates acoustic signatures that can be interpreted by the fibre optic response signal, which is linked to a user interface (such as a monitor, tablet or phone) that monitors behaviour over time and classifies signals above a set threshold or signatures based on acoustic profiles.

EDS successfully demonstrated the capability of Cable Sentry having located a 132kV cable fault on the Robin Rigg Offshore Wind Farm. EDS were able to pinpoint the fault location within hours of arriving on site and far quicker than using traditional techniques, providing a significant saving to the client.

Results from the application at Robin Rigg not only provided an accurate fault location but also detected trains on a rail crossing, footsteps of the fault location team, the occurrence of scour and plotted vessel coordinates; all heard through the optical fibres.